Three Poems

Poetry by Jess Rizkallah

DEIR AL QAMAR MEANS CONVENT OF THE MOON AND IT’S ALL I THINK ABOUT

i wanna marriage aziz ansari / because he says clever things on the internet / and i want to marriage the tallest mountain on the planet because it’s the closest one to the moon / but i wanna use it to get to the moon / i want to run away with the moon / but then shit will get complicated because i'll still also be in love with the mountain because a small part of you loves everyone you've ever loved even if you don't love them anymore / so i'll always kinda love you / wait /

with the lights on / didn't snatch the sun away / in a past life we were newsies / getting lost on backstreets / dropping skin cells / before that we were neighbors / i’d leave a cup of soup on his doorstep every once in a while when the taragon was extra crisp / every time it rained i’d find a different piece of colored glass to glue into my skin condition / replacing skin cells / and then i was a window / left him to throw myself at the sun / rode on the coattails of bullet cases / the sun shrapneled me into my mother's garden where she would find me thirty years later / nestled between the tomatoes / would carry me in the seeds of herself / would learn me how to love / before that the mountain was my wife and i was a bad husband / many husbands often are / lacerated her tongue with the glass she gave me when it rained / have you ever used stained glass for evil / have you ever caught it trying to escape through the cracks in yourself / this is what the catch in the pad of my thumb is / i still carry it around / when my skin gets caught on the lint of my scarf / when it screams by going red / when it swallows the chemicals while i work / while i scrub dishes made of the prelude to everything i'm going to ruin / and it burns / i know

i fucked up once / broke a mountain's heart / now i'm doing it again / i plan on doing it again /